Program

A financially self-sufficient network of secondary schools which give low-income students the opportunity to receive a quality education while learning practical agricultural and business skills through operating real microenterprises on campus.

The Sindh Radiant Organization's Girls Secondary School Certificates project aims to improve access to education for girls in extremely remote areas of Sindh Province, who otherwise would have not been able to continue education after primary school, by setting up community-based learning centers.

The Public Private Partnerships for Education project aims to facilitate the adoption of schools by private or corporate sponsors to improve educational services in marginalized and under-served communities across Pakistan's Sindh Province.

The Broad Class - Listen to Learn radio program aims to improve access to quality education for in-school and out-of-school public primary school children in Islamabad using Interactive Radio Instruction to deliver English lessons and teaching materials on air.

Ilm on Wheels aims to enhance learning achievements in mathematics for public primary school children in the remote areas of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, by providing access to online learning content and tools via a satellite-enabled Mobile Van.

The Skills for Employability Program aims to identify and train 300 Education Entrepreneurs from remote areas and to assist them in opening schools and other educational centers in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

Development Resource Solutions is using public school premises in the evenings to provide remedial academic education and life skills training, in addition to WASH facilities, activities, and snacks, to out-of-school working children with the aim of drawing them back into formal education.

ITA has launched the ‘School Assessment for School Improvement (SASI) Program’ as a social enterprise in Pakistan that conducts comprehensive school assessments to improve school management; assessments result in implementable options for school improvement.

Trojans introduced 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) courses at the secondary school level to enhance the conceptual understanding of science subjects and vocational skills of schoolchildren from the underprivileged areas of Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

SAHE is seeking to address the content knowledge deficit of teachers and students by training teachers in the use of pocket-size projectors to play instructional videos, such as those from the acclaimed Khan Academy.

The Chenab Development Foundation is providing access to non-formal lower secondary education for out-of-school girls living in remote rural areas of Punjab through 15 Rural Girls Education Centres, where focus is placed on an extensive teacher training process and an SMS-based feedback mechanism is used to engage parents and the community.

Bunyad Literacy Community Council (BLCC) has designed a holistic community intervention to improve enrollment rates in Rahim Yar Khan district in Punjab province, by setting up non-formal primary schools and mothers literacy centers in the target communities, and conducting enrollment drives and awareness campaigns.

Simorgh is developing and testing a tri-lingual (Punjabi, Urdu, and English) primer for class 1 students in Punjab, where the government curriculum is taught in either Urdu or English, to determine whether education in the mother-tongue will enhance learning outcomes.

The Progressive Institute of Socio-economics (PRISE) is setting up non-formal education centers in the Nankana Sahib community in collaboration with local small-industry representatives to provide education to children who are often working as bonded laborers at brick kilns in the area.

The Azat Foundation is establishing off-campus 'community cluster' schools for girls, to expand access to and promote continued education for girls with the help of space provided by the local community.

Teach For Pakistan is a non-profit organization that places some of the country’s most outstanding college graduates and young professionals in teaching positions in under-resourced schools for two or more years with the aim of tackling education inequity and leading their students to success.

O3 attempts to foster cross-cultural understanding and social good by connecting students, educators, and artists in India, Pakistan, and the United States through the dynamic power of multimedia, music, dance, and theater.

TCF’s innovative Education Service and School Management program provides poor and marginalized communities in Pakistan access to high-quality education at a low cost by building purpose-built campuses in low-income areas across the country.

CRCP is working to empower parents and communities as consumers of education services, to aggregate their voices and hold the district education management to account, using the communities’ understanding of the district budget and issues pertinent to schools for better access to quality education.

GRACE Pakistan aims to raise awareness among parents, teachers, and communities about enrolling all children, especially girls and children with disabilities, into primary school and to create accessible and safe environments in existing public and private primary schools for children with special needs.

Education Planning Working Groups (EPWGs) enables participatory, grassroots planning involving citizens, community representatives, district government and school officials to help improve the quality of education through effective citizens’ oversight, enhanced administrative management and better aligned budgetary allocations based on research.

The Association of Global Humanists & Ethics is creating an enabling environment to influence the policy environment and mobilize wider support for education for girls in the district of Diamir by allocating more financial resources to meet girls’ education needs.

PenPal Schools provides six-week courses on global issues and connects its students with a partner from around the world to help them understand others' cultures, ideas, and perspectives on these topics.

Khud employs sustainable education technology to overcome challenges faced by lack of teachers or teacher quality, in order to stimulate creative thinking and create more independent learners in marginalized schools and communities.

The Getting Ready for School program trains older children to actively engage with pre-school children in their communities, helping young learners prepare for a successful transition to primary school in areas where formal preschool is not available.

The HOpE Program in Indonesia gives microloans to low-income mothers conditional on sending their school-age children to school, helps at-risk youth find employment, and conducts entrepreneurship training to help youth create new micro businesses.

The Global Parternship for Education's Open Data Initiative has gathered over 11,000 data points from over 29 countries to build its monitoring and eevaluation strategy. The datasets compare education targets to actual results in each GPE developing country partner to help countries assess their progress, develop evidence-based programs to address children's educations, and access aggregate joint sectore review documents, grant applications, and key outcome visualizations.

This report looks at how destructive attacks on education in conflict and fragile states affects all stakeholders: learners, educators, families, and governments. This report surveys the scale of attacks on education and why they occur, presents country case studies from the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territory, Pakistan, and Syria.

This report reviews the work of the Citizens Foundation in Pakistan since 2008. The Citizens Foundation currently operates and supports schools in Pakistan's poorest regions, for the country's most under-resourced learners in four provinces. This report surveys the educational landscape in Pakistan and the ways in which the Citizens Foundation has conducted its outreach, school construction, and school maintenance. The author relies on data collected from 11 of the Foundation's schools across a two-week survey period in 2008.

This 2013 position paper highlights key questions, projects, and plans within DFID's commitments to global education delivery and financing. The report starts by asking "Why is education important for development?" and "Which education investments matter most?" before transitioning into a critical look at what types of education initiatives the UK government is currently implementing or financing in developing countries. The report includes commentary on the post-2015 education development framework as well as snapshots of results and DFID's analytics.

International support for the low-fee non-state education sector is extremely low, about 3% of all international aid for basic education, despite the sector's significant and rapidly growing presence. This paper looks at major bilateral (AusAID, CIDA, DFID, USAID) and multilateral (UNDP, UNICEF, World Bank Group) agencies' expenditure on specific low-cost private schools and NGO-sponsored programs.

Transparency International's 2013 Global Corruption Report focuses on corruption in education, specifically on the effects felt heavily by the world's poor and disadvantaged. In addition to providing an overview of global trends in this sector, this report includes a number of country-specific examples at the schooling and higher education levels.

This report by the Development Impact Bond Working Group explores how the concept of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) can be applied to development. The working group makes key recommendations to donor agencies, trusts and foundations, investors, governments, intermediary organizations, and service providers on how to create a market for these Development Impact Bonds (DIBs). The report also explores six diverse case studies, including two in the field of education: low-cost private schools (LCPS) in Pakistan and access to quality secondary education in Uganda.

This paper shares the findings of a meta-analysis of 76 randomized experiments administered in developing countries over the last 40 years. In total, this included the effects of 110 different school interventions - including instructional materials, computers or technology, financial incentives, teacher training, and school meals - on language and mathematics scores in primary school students.

As a part of the Learning and Education Achievement in Punjab Schools Project (LEAPS), a randomized controlled trial evaluated the impact of distributing report cards on changes in students' test scores, school fees, and enrollment in markets with both public and private schools in Pakistan. The trial took place in 112 villages, each representing a "closed market," which included more than 800 public and private primary schools. The project tested grade 3 students annually in English, Mathematics, and Urdu and provided report cards to half of the villages.

ASER Pakistan 2013 collected data from 138 out of 145 districts across Pakistan, the largest data set available to Pakistani researchers regarding the learning levels of children aged 5 to 16. The findings of the report are divided into several categories including, but not limited to, differences between government and non-state schools, genders, and geographic locations. Through extensive analysis, this project aims to improve and transform education opportunities in Pakistan.

This South Asia study is primarily based on findings from four OOSC country studies on Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. These four countries have strong national legislation and expressed commitment to the international frameworks to provide all children with basic education. Impressive achievements in improving basic school enrollment rates have been seen in these countries over the past decade. However, staggering numbers of children remain out of school, particularly in the three most populous countries: Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

This study explores why Pakistani parents in rural Punjab choose to send their children to low-fee private schools when free public schools are available. The study is based on a 2011 survey of a representative sample of 1,024 households in rural Punjab. Although the majority of children in the sample attend government schools, even among the poorest 20 percent of households, 9 percent of children are enrolled in private schools.

This systematic review conducted on behalf of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID). This report presents the findings of DFID’s Systematic Review No. 29, which addresses the question:

What is the evidence regarding the sustainable scale-up of low-cost private primary schools in South West Asia, in particular in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

There is little private sector development research that analyzes the LCPS sector from a MSME entrepreneurship perspective in Pakistan. However, an International Finance Corporation (IFC) report on private schools in Pakistan asserts that 76% of private schools produce financial statements. While low fee schools are increasingly viewed as an attractive investment proposition for commercial investment purposes, it is essential to explore financing options for such schools to secure long-term financial viability.

The education sector in Pakistan has made significant progress over the past 10 years, however it remains under acute pressure. Demographic shifts and a lack of public financing mean that in Pakistan’s public education system has been increasingly stretched, both in terms of scale and quality of provision. As a result families have increasingly turned to private schools, which are estimated to now account for 20% of all school places in Pakistan (ASER Pakistan 2012).